1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information search apparatus, an information search method, an information search program, and a graphical user interface, and more particularly, to an information search apparatus, an information search method, an information search program, and a graphical user interface that are suitably applicable in searching associated objects and presenting the searched objects to a user.
2. Description of the Related Art
Information search processing is widely known in which an information processing apparatus, such as a computer, is used to search masses of information for associated information and extract the searched associated information.
In such information search processing, a keyword set by the user is matched against a character string (an object name or attribute for example) belonging to a candidate object subject to search, for example, to present candidate objects highly associated with the keyword to the user as associated objects.
In such information search processing, many associated objects may be searched depending on the setting of keywords or the number of candidate objects subject to selection, for example. Therefore, it is a general practice in information search processing to make each user set the number of displays of associated objects, thereby presenting only the number of associated objects desired by the user.
However, in the above-mentioned example, the user have to set the number of displays of associated objects in advance and, if the user wants of change the number of displays, discontinue an information search operation to set the number of displays again, which hampers the ease of operation.